The Northern Rocky Mountains are a land of
beauty and treasure
with colorful skies, high majestic mountains,
glacial-carved features,
plentiful lakes, life giving aquifers, abundant
forests, big game, and
rich mines of silver, zinc, lead, copper, gold,
cobalt, iron and other
metals and nonmetals. These mountains include an
area about the size
of the state of Minnesota. We live in or near
these mountains.
Very briefly, my background includes loving
science since I was a
child of 7 (1949). As a teenager and into my
twenties I had my own
science lab, donated by my grandparents. My father
was an engineering
geologist in ability. Dad’s pumice building blocks
from his quarries
in the California Coast Ranges were used in the
San Francisco Golden
Gate International Exposition of 1939. I first was
introduced to the
Darwinian evolutionary philosophy at the
University of California as a
student and at San Jose State University as a
graduate student. For
the U.S. Geological Survey, I did marine geology
in the Pacific and
Atlantic Oceans and in the Bering Sea; and
geologic mapping in the
Pacific Northwest. I also did geology in Canada,
Scotland and England.
Yes, I understand radiometric age dating having
done potassium-argon
age dating at the U.S.G.S. I have been giving
talks on Earth and
Planetary science for about 38 years.
For those who love the outdoors, including
teenagers, Dads, Moms,
hikers, hunters, fishermen, with degrees, without
degrees, atheists,
theistic evolutionists, pantheists, those who have
“had-a-bad-church-experience” (I am truly sorry
about that); you have
a wonderful opportunity to enter your own science
laboratory—our own
Northern Rocky Mountains.
Please consider stepping away from your
computer keyboard at times
and take a drive up Highways 90 or 95 and enter
into the hundreds of
miles of national forest roads around us. Also,
consider picking up a
geologic pick, a hand lens, a topographic map of
the area you are
interested in, a compass (or brunton compass, for
bedding
orientation), sample bags or a digital camera. It
is good to have a
partner who is motived to understand earth history
as you are; and to
have some survival training. If you advance in
your studies, buying a
used polarizing microscope and making rock thin
sections, can take you
into a fascinating micro universe!
Question: Are the most ancient sediments and
interbedded basalts
of the Belt Supergroup Formations of the Northern
Rocky Mountains, the
result of an evolutionary model or a catastrophic
model or some other
model?
You will have a steep learning curve; but if
you have the
motivation and are interested in earth history you
will be fine. At
least by 1893 (A.C. Peale), the evolutionary model
has been used to
understand these laminated (thin bedded)
fine-grained sediments (~90%
of the rocks), basalts, granites, and metamorphic
rocks. But the
evolutionists make comments like, “Belt rocks are
not simple to map”
(Belt Symposium I, 1973); or “How many have a
handle on Belt
stratigraphy!” (Belt Sym. IV, 2003). Maybe you can
help solve some of
the puzzles of these sometimes beautifully colored
gray, green,
purple, pink, red, black, and white formations in
unweathered
outcrops! Also, notice the ancient ripple marks
common in these
Mountains—see if you can get paleocurrent
directions with your compass
or brunton. Have some fun!
Because I did potassium-argon age dating
(K-Ar) at the U.S.G.S., I
get asked a lot about evolutionary-age dating
schemes. Potassium-40
has a half-life of 1.3 billion years and tends to
give high ages,
which often range greatly in the same sample. For
example, one sample
dated at the U.S.G.S. gave ages of 67, 92, and 144
million years.
Another sample gave an age of 30 million years,
but the geologist
wanted 55 million years, so he discarded the
sample. This problem
continues in dating our own Northern Rocky
Mountains. The current age
for the deposition of the fine-grained sediments
is 70 million years,
and deposited between 1.47 to 1.40 billion years
ago (Belt Sym. IV,
2003). Earlier dates for deposition were 400 m.y.
(NW Geol. 23, 1994)
and 200 m.y. (Belt Sym. III, 1993). In a 35-year
period (1968 to 2003)
the evolutionary ages ranged from 700+ to 70
million years. Most
people do not realize this.
Red shifted light from the galaxies does not
demonstrate that the
universe is 14-billion years old. Many experiments
show that light is
slowing down over time. Why? Because space is not
really a vacuum,
even at absolute zero (-2730 C). Light photons are
being slowed up in
their travels to earth by the huge amounts of
electromagnetic energy
contained in each cubic centimeter (cm3) of
space–called zero-point
energy. Australian physicist Barry Setterfield has
been studying the
decay of light speed for over 30 years. Since his
preliminary research
for Stanford Research Institute International
(1987), Setterfield has
expanded his work–start there.
Regarding soft tissue evidence in ancient
animals: 1)
551-million-year old (Precambrian) worm fossils
still have flexible
walls (Jour. of Paleontology, 2014); 2)
508-million-year old Burgess
Shale (Canada) has highly complex and diverse
phyla (Cambrian
Explosion of life!) with fossils including amino
acids, proteins, and
gut parts (H.B. Whittington, 1985); 3)
190-million-year old sauropod
dinosaur egg bones (China) contain protein
remnants (Nature, 2013); 4)
8-inch long sheets of soft tissue inside a 22-inch
long triceratops
dinosaur horn found in the Hell Creek Formation in
Montana (Acta
Histochemica, 2013); 5) In 1908 Charles Stenberg
found mummified
hadrosaur dinosaur remains with skin preserved
with scales in Wyoming;
6) 80-million-year old Mosasaur fossil has purple
“retina” residue in
eyeball area. Also, still-red blood tissues were
found where organs
were located (PLoS ONE, 1998); 7)
65-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus
rex fossil has soft, transparent and flexible
tissue (Science, 2005);
8) 150-million-year old squid ink sac (UK), whose
ink was so fresh
that scientists could write with the ink
(Archaeology Daily News,
8/18/2009). Dozens of more cases of soft tissue in
fossils are found
in the literature. Evolutionists are trying to do
damage control by
saying these are only bacteria and bacteria
films—repeatedly proven
untrue.
There are thousands of scientists who were
trained at major
universities in biology, geology, astronomy,
physics, archeology, and
paleontology, who no longer support Darwinian
evolution. For biology
see Sanford, J.C., “Genetic Entropy & Mystery of
the Genome” (2005);
and Meyer, S.C., “Signature in the Cell” (2009)
and “Debating Darwin’s
Doubt” (2015).
The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote,
“And Nature, the old
nurse, took the child upon her knee, saying ‘Here
is a story book Thy
Father hath written for thee.’ ‘Come, wander with
me,’ she said, ‘Into
regions yet untrod, and read what is still unread
in the manuscripts
of God.’”